Comic Book Junction

Wonder Woman Day III — October 26, 2008

in Portland, OR and Flemington, NJ

Is An Outstanding Benefit For Domestic Violence Shelters & Crisis Line

All Ages Events Spotlight World’s Most Famous Super-Heroine

And Features Sensational Art Show And Auction!

Portland, Oregon, October 14, 2008 — One of the most recognizable female icons in the world, Wonder Woman debuted in American comic books during World War II, and was the super-heroic star of a popular television series in the 1970s. Now, for the third year in a row, the heroine brandishes her Amazon bracelets and golden lasso as a star-spangled symbol for a charity benefit for Portland’s most protective domestic violence shelters — Raphael House and Bradley-Angle House — and the Portland Women’s Crisis Line. Excalibur Comics will host “Wonder Woman Day” on Sunday, October 26th from 12noon to 6pm. The free all-ages event will include a quartet of comic book creators signing Wonder Woman comics and special art prints, as well as a silent art auction with over 150 of the world’s top artists contributing original art, plus costumed super-heroes on-site, raffles and prizes, rare memorabilia, and more!

Additionally, a second “Wonder Woman Day” benefit will take place on Sunday, October 26th, in Flemington, NJ, at Comic Fusion, as part of their “Super-Hero Weekend.” This East Coast event will benefit Safe in Hunterdon, a domestic violence shelter in New Jersey.

For more information please visit The Wonder Woman Museum

From the promo copy:

“After the shocking twist at the end of the extra-sized Ghost Rider #28, Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch aren’t just on a collision course anymore…they’re at war! Enter Ghost Rider #29, from critically-acclaimed scribe Jason Aaron (Wolverine: Manifest Destiny) and Eisner Award-winning artist Tan Eng Huat present the epic battle you’ve been waiting for! Now’s your chance to jump onboard the series that critics can’t stop praising!”

I’m a fan of Tan Eng Huat’s moody, 70s-inspired work on this series, so I will give it a read.

(click for full-size)

Alternate covers usually make me go “ick” — but I think this one is rather neat. Reminds me of when Saturday Night Live was on Marvel Team-Up!

Alternate Cover To Amazing Spider-Man #573:

Mulling over the imprint-formerly-known-as-Minx, I think back to another line of paperback-sized, bookshelf-format comics: the Acclaim Young Readers line.

The line, launched in 1997 by Acclaim Comics (formerly known as Valiant) had an impressive roster of books to offer:

* Classics Illustrated: Mostly reprints (recolored and relettered) of the classic comic book series, with educational material in the back and beautiful fully-painted covers

* Disney’s Enchanting Stories and Disney’s Action Club: featuring new stories starring all of the company’s top characters (girl-themed and boy-themed).

* Fox Funhouse and Saban’s Powerhouse: Spearheaded by The Tick and Power Rangers, these book ran a number of original comics based on Fox Kids programming.

* Acclaim Adventure Zone: Starring Turok & Ninjak, plus other Acclaim/Valiant properties.

With top licenses and a beautiful product, these Acclaim Young Readers books seemed like a no-brainer.

From the marketing booklet:

What if the world’s most popular, most recognizable and most profitable children’s properties were teamed with the country’s fastest growing, most dynamic comics publishing company?

And how was this line different from your standard run-of-the-mill comics?

We started by creating an attractive, trend-setting new visual storybook format. Wider than a paperback, smaller and thicker than a comic book, more substantial than a magazine. Feels like a book, reads like a comic.

The idea from the beginning was to get the Acclaim Young Readers line into the bookstores, but I don’t think it ever penetrated the market. Initial reports back from those hired to pitch the books to buyers was, to my recollection (I was the assistant editor on some of the line), kind of poor. But from no lack of offered floor displays, shelf extenders, and the like.

But if Acclaim Young Readers never made it into — or made an impact on — the book stores, in the Direct Market they were completely lost. Relegated to the bottom shelves, packed in with the “Kids Ghetto” of comic selections — or even worse, racked spine-out. Unlike the beefy mangas that would make such a splash less than ten years later, the spines on the Acclaim Young Readers line were extremely thin and nondescript. If they had the misfortune to be placed on store shelves like actual books –they were completely invisible & forgotten.

What about the quality of the material itself? Classics Illustrated was definitely a harder sell than anticipated, largely because though “remastered,” the art still looked very antiquated. The licensed material was pretty decent, though editors and talent struggled through the first couple of volumes of each, trying to hit the sometimes near-impossible standard set by Disney & Fox. What Acclaim ended up doing was depend more and more on comic studios overseas, who were trained to knock out picture-perfect replicas of the properties in question, especially Disney’s. As for Acclaim Adventure Zone — the company had a hard enough time selling their own mainstream comics. They were fun stories, though.

Despite poor sales, Classics Illustrated had ambitious plans for 1998: all-original new adaptations, including Pride and Prejudice and Dracula (which, if memory serves me correctly, MIGHT have been slated with Marv Wolfman writing the script), plus Classics Junior, a line of adaptations for younger children. But, as in the case with MInx ten years later, the series, and Acclaim Young Readers in general, was pulled, leaving nearly-finished books and not a few scripts dead in the water.

Was Acclaim Young Readers ahead of its time? Can digest-sized comics for kids other other than manga success?

Well, there’s always Jughead’s Jokes.

So, where were we?

Apologies for the long absence – summer tends to be completely insane at my day job of making videogames, what with publishers wanting things out the door in time for Christmas, and mine was swallowed whole by work this year. But things have calmed down a bit and I’m back now (and super special thanks to Val for having me), filled to bursting with a backlog of large words about comics just desperate for an audience to assault. You lucky devil, you.

For the uninitiated, a quick explanation of what’s going on: Comics Are Expensive is (ostensibly) a weekly column where in I take apart my recent purchases to see if they’re worth my hard-earned dollars. This first installment back is a bit of a cheat, as the books in question aren’t out yet, but as one arrives later this month and the other at the beginning of October, and I plan on buying them both once I’m able, I figure we can let it slide. Both titles are from Minx, DC’s line of graphic novels aimed at teenage girls, which after just over a year of existence is still one of the better ideas anybody in comics has had in a good long while. Next week should see the return of things I’ve already swapped money for, honest.

Potential spoilers ahead. And maybe dragons.

JANES IN LOVE

Writer: Cecil Castellucci

Artist: Jim Rugg

A year and change ago, The Plain Janes was Minx’s opening salvo on comic shops and bookstores. And it was good. Better than good, actually – The Plain Janes managed to push past my inherent cynicism over anything specifically geared towards a younger audience to find and lift up the thin shred of hope I had that DC actually knew what they were doing. It was a fun, mature work, complete with a believable and engaging cast that I wanted to know more about from page one. If there was a problem with the book, it was the lack of a “Volume 1″ or something like it on the spine to let readers know that the somewhat abrupt end of the story wasn’t, in fact, the end. Hardly the most annoying thing in the world, and given the books position as the first step of a fledgling comics brand into the wider world, an understandable one. Not much sense in promising a second volume when you don’t know if anybody’s going to buy the first one, yeah?

Happily, The Plain Janes – along with the Minx line overall – appears to be doing rather well for itself. It’s not that surprising, considering author Cecil Castellucci’s background: she’s an award-winning YA author with a reputation for crafting realistic characters and putting them in stories that refuse to talk down to their audience. When it’s reaching the point where I can’t even get my regular dose of Boing-Boing’s Cory Doctrow declaring anything with gears glued to it Steampunk without seeing a new article praising her talents, it’s safe to say she’s on to something. The Plain Janes was my first exposure to YA fiction not involving magical British kids in ages, and was a complete breath of fresh air compared to the books I remember being told were “just for me!” at that age. The story of four girls bound together by a common name and the need to somehow express themselves in their safer-than- safe slice of suburbia, it tapped into the teenage need for individuality, that impulse to do something, anything special to fight against the heard in a way that I would have killed for at fifteen. That it was all drawn by Jim Rugg, half of the creative team behind yesterday’s indie darling Street Angel was just icing - lovely, graceful icing full of little detail and moments that made the story just shine.

Janes In Love, the first sequel to The Plain Janes (and of any Minx book, actually) picks up the story nearly a year after our last bittersweet encounter with the Janes, and wastes no time getting back in to it. The regular attacks of public art they pull under the name P.L.A.I.N (People Loving Art In Neighborhoods, ‘natch) are just starting up again after the last one ended in the arrest of Damon, not-so-secret crush of P.LA.I.N. leader Jane Beckles. As before, their actions amuse and impress some in the community and enrage others, most notably Officer Sanchez of the local police. This, year, however, there’s a new force working against P.L.A.I.N’s late night artistry – a Sadie Hawkins-style dance is coming up, and one by one each of the girls become kinda-sorta obsessed with taking just the right boy along. Because boys ruin everything.

As the story progresses, Castellucci delves further in to the realities P.L.A.I.N’s particular style of artistic expression brings with it – namely, art is expensive, and civil disobedience can get you arrested just as fast as its less noble cousins. The answer to both problems comes in the form of an empty lot in just begging to be transformed and the Metro City Museum of Modern Art Contest, where the lucky winner receives a healthy chunk of funding for their proposed art project. It’s a great continuation of the previous volume’s themes, building off the “see, anybody can do this” message of the first one by adding “and here’s a first step you can take towards something bigger”. The result is an important message for readers of any age, showing what regular people can do when committed to an idea while staying mostly grounded in the reality that it won’t be easy. I say “mostly” only because of the climax – while The Plain Janes managed to end on a romantic but real note, the resolution to Janes In Love’s dilemmas feels a bit too neat. It’s a teen movie, “and they all lived happily ever after” ending, and seeing how at its heart this is a teen movie in comic form, that’s good enough. Still, though, it can’t help but nag.

For all its merit, though, the main plot of P.L.A.I.N. trying to realize their goal of reinventing their community through art is merely the backdrop for some fantastic character pieces. Jane’s mother takes the next step from her role of frightened, over protective parent in the first volume to blossom in to a full blown agoraphobic after a friend of hers back in the city is killed in a terrorist attack, becoming a quiet shell that Jane and her father keep trying to breathe life back in to. Sure, trying to reconnect her with the world provides a handy reason for Jane to keep fighting to see her project realized, but its best work is as an elegant reflection on Jane herself, and how she handles herself when reality becomes too much to bear. Elsewhere, trouble brewing amongst the ranks of P.L.A.I.N. provides one of the more realistic looks at life after high school I’ve seen in a good long while as the first signs of the fault lines along which the group of friends will inevitably split make their first appearance. I’m doing my best not to spoil either here, so suffice to say that the first is one of the more empowering scenes I’ve seen in so-called YA fiction, while the other is certainly one of the most bittersweet.

While it doesn’t quite hit as hard as The Plain Janes, Janes In Love still leaves an impression as a more than worthy sequel. Taken as a whole, Castellucci and Rugg’s work practically justifies the existence of the Minx line all on its own. While this latest volume could easily work as the end of the story, it’d be a genuine shame if this were the last comics work we get from the team. There’s always room for more optimism with its feet firmly on the ground, after all.

EMIKO SUPERSTAR

Writer: Mariko Tamaki

Artist: Steve Rolston

Where to start with Emiko Superstar? The back-of-the-book tagline (”Not often, but every once in a while – amazing stuff happens to former geeks”) didn’t exactly inspire confidence, despite the promise of art from Steve Rolston, he who has been scientifically proven to be incapable of doing wrong. I had no idea who Mariko Tamaki is, outside of her short bio proclaiming her to be a writer, performer, and playwright. By now I trusted the people in charge of Minx to recruit writers from outside or on the fringes of comics who knew what they were doing, but still. In a choice between the sequel to a book I really enjoyed and a new effort from an unknown, well, it wasn’t much of a choice.

Happily, I now know exactly who Mariko Tamaki is. She’s somebody who understands.

Emiko Superstar is the story of a high school girl named – wait for it – Emiko, and the long, strange summer bridging the gap between who she was and who she should be. Painfully awkward and more than a little bit boring at the start, Emiko is a failed coffee shop employee turned babysitter doing whatever she can to get through the dead, friendless months between one school year and the next with her head down. All is going according to plan until a chance encounter with Poppy, a regular feature at a Warhol-inspired performance space called The Factory. What starts with a flyer from a girl in face paint and dreadlocks quickly snowballs in to a secret life for Emiko, the sort that, if you’re very careful, eventually takes the place of your boring real one.

It’s a coming-of-age story, obviously. And while the same can be said of much of the Minx line up, Emiko Superstar is easily one of the most touching, realistic, and ultimately important ones around. While DC’s Little Graphic Novel Line That Could has produced all manner of stories I’ve enjoyed, this is the first to hit me square between the eyes with something I could relate to beyond the usual teenage drama. And not just because I am in fact a teenage girl myself, oh no – it’s because if there’s one thing Tamaki understands, it’s the long, grueling process of establishing your own creative voice.

Sometime after being introduced to the Freak Show, the weekly variety night at The Factory, and being bitten by the idea of becoming one of its performers, Emiko discovers the diary of the mom she babysits for. Rather than the bored tale of suburban angst one might expect, the diary is a litany of regrets, a growing hatred of her husband, and longing for the person she’d rather be with. Realizing the potential power of what she’s stumbled on to, Emiko copies as much of it as she can and turns it into fodder for a series of monologues at the Freak Show, becoming an instant hit and ascending to the ranks of its most popular regulars.

It’s a shitty thing to do, taking somebody’s innermost secrets and turning them in to fodder for a performance piece. It’s also one of the most honest portrayals of the first fumbling steps most people take towards creating their own artistic identity. Far too many stories about creative types have their protagonist as either some fount of inspiration and beauty just waiting for the world to notice or as an everyday person just waiting for that special mentor figure to unlock their true potential. This is all well and good for them, but when you’re young and first trying to pick out your own way, there’s nothing more frustrating than reading a book or seeing a movie where unique perspectives worth listening to are handed out as toys with the kid’s meal. The truth tends to go more like this: you start out as a really bad cover band of somebody else’s style, and then star layering other somebody elses on top of that. Eventually, if you’re really lucky, you’re able to cast off the bits that don’t work and pound the ones that do in to something that’s distinctly yours. So yes, Emiko’s actions are selfish and cruel and more than a little heartless, but they’re also not too far from the (sometimes) passable Warren Ellis impression I was doing at eighteen when I decided to get more serious about writing. Either way there’s more than a little theft going on (albeit some more overt than others), and to have a book actually own up to it makes me wish I had a time machine to chuck it in to for the benefit of my past self.

Almost as important is the other lovely examination of one of more critical steps of growing up: discovering your first social scene. The Factory and its owner, the otherwise unnamed Curator, form the center of the counter-culture scene in Emiko’s little town, drawing all sorts of people with different colored hair and interesting bits of metal wedged in their faces. Emiko’s early reaction to it all – that is to say, fleeing in terror – is all too painfully familiar to my own (ahem) first interactions with what passed for scenes in my own small town, and I imagine a lot of people will find themselves wincing sympathetically. Tamaki and Rolston do a fantastic job of capturing the inevitable arc of that first encounter with something so new and different – the early fascination with it all (complete with the initial desperate need to belong), the more-than-human stars everybody else orbits around, and the eventual disillusionment. It’s as neat a dissection of scenes and their gatekeepers as you could hope for, laying out the good and bad with the precision of some one who’s clearly been there. The world of The Factory isn’t all good, and (as with all scenes, inevitably) it’s slowly being torn apart by its own drama. As Emiko Superstar makes clear, however, it’s all worth it for the chance to see what you could be when you grow up.

Mariko Tamaki understands, and has created a story that went from something I wasn’t sure about to one of the best Minx has produced so far. With the perfect partner in the form of Rolston, who packs each page with so much detail and life that you’d swear the characters move if you aren’t watching them closely, they’ve produced an incredibly honest look at what it takes to reinvent yourself that should be required reading for any one remotely interested in pursuing the arts in any way. Please oh please, let them do another.

And that’s it for this week. As always, if there’s anything you think I should check out, feel free to drop a line to chrislamb@gmail.com and let me know all about it. See you next time, yeah?

Royal Flush is a cross between Hit Parader, Mad, and Famous Monsters of Filmland, providing an intersection between heavy metal/punk culture and comix. Each issue is more of a bookshelf quality anthology than a magazine, and offers a selection of interviews with rock and pop-culture icons as well as original comics.

Book Five features comic book fan Patton Oswalt, the art of Iron Maiden, the MC5, and a look at 1980s movie villains such as Martin Kove from Karate Kid. Heading the comics section is “Hispanic Batman” by Rodriguez & Bernstein, along with Neil Swaab, Harlan P. Cress, and others.

Each issue of Royal Flush is so maniacally crammed with cool material that I find myself still coming across new stuff I haven’t had a chance to read yet. Whether you’re a music fan or an indie comix buff, there is plenty for you in Royal Flush.

World Of Warcraft: Ashbringer #1

Writer: Micky Neilson

Artists: Ludo Lullabi & Tony Washington

Publisher: Wildstorm

The best thing that could have been done with this review copy was to send it either to a World of Warcraft fan or a D&D buff. Alas, I am neither, so my comprehension of and caring for this story is limited. The art is good in that pseudo-manga Wildstormy style. I don’t think I see anything here that would drive a W.O.W. fan away, and I suppose it must satisfyingly fill in the blanks regarding some of the familiar characters and concepts of the video game. That’s pretty much all I have to say.

Den of Geek comes up with an intriguing argument for setting the proposed “rebooted” Superman movie in the 1930s instead of the present time. Among their reasons are the success of Mark Millar’s Red Son miniseries, the coolness of a retro look along the lines of The Hudsucker Proxy and the latest King Kong remake, and echoes of The Great Depression in our own time period.

Plus, Kate Bosworth wouldn’t have been born yet.

Seriously, though, this is a great idea most of all because it can bring the character back to its pulpy, adventurous roots. But in the wake of The Dark Knight, is that straightforward “fun” approach really going to catch on?

Ghost Rider #25

Writer: Jason Aaron

Artists: Tan Eng Huat and Jose Villarrubia

Marvel Comics

I loved the art in this issue by Tan Eng Huat and Jose Villarrubia, the style looking like the lovechild of Frank Robbins and Kevin O’Neill. Throughout writer Jason Aaron’s run on the series there’s been a 1970s Marvel monster magazine vibe that has helped the title regain the edginess and funk reserved for such “horror” characters.

But yet, has Ghost Rider ever really gotten the same mature, Creepy-esque treatment that characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and Blade have? (Certainly the Texiera era was awesome, but it became so diluted by the overexposure of the character and pointless guest-appearances and guest-stars.)

Maybe to essentially “Vertigo Up” (in the classic sense of the word) this comic is to situate the property in its proper place — away from the realm of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and more firmly placed in the realm of the dark and creepy (with a touch of grindhouse).

That said, it has been my observation that Tan Eng Huat’s art sometimes gets a very strong reaction from some people, who find the intense stylistic elements simply “too weird” for them. (I am reminded of his notable run on one of the Doom Patrol reboots.) But I like it. I like picking up comics that are interesting and out-of-the-box visually. I think more chances need to be taken.

Concept art for The Joker from the book The Art Of The Dark Knight…

Joker drawing by Super Edco from the Cup Doodle collaborative art blog

Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, and Catwoman by Kian at Gorilla Artfare

Batman and Robin by Bernice Gordon